


I See You

by Phoebeyuu



Category: A Monster Calls (2016), A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 10:57:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2690312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoebeyuu/pseuds/Phoebeyuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Conor confronts Harry about the reason why the bully picked him up after the nightmare started.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I See You

**Author's Note:**

> Cannot help to write this after read Harry and Conor's interaction. Despite of the bullying, I thought Harry was the only one who didn't avoid Conor and instead confronts him. Not that I said that bullying is allowed, but still, Harry was quite a different bully, don't you think? Minor edit.

His weird snort was all Conor heard first as he entered the room. The all-too-clean smell and the whiteness of the room came later to his vision.  
  
"What? Having a stockholm syndrome, O'Malley?"  
  
And his screwed-up face and taped nose came much later, when Conor had the courage to lift his face to see the person lied down on the hospital bed, wearing a too-familiar hospital gown and playing his PSP with one arm like he didn't care for all the pain in the world--much less to his broken face and arm. Conor wanted to feel guilty since he was the one who made that actually quite good-looking face marred black and blue, but how could he, when his said victim seemed like he didn't even care about what happened to himself? Harry was never someone Conor could understand from the beginning. He didn't even know why he's here, in his bully's hospital room. Mostly because the headmistress asked him--begged him--to apologize about what he did to Harry at school a week ago, but he knew he was allowed to reject the request still. So why was he here?  
  
"How did you get in? I bet you're not asking nicely to my parents to let you see me."  
  
"I did," answered Conor. "I asked nicely. The headmistress was with me, bribing your parents and let them believe that I'm here to apologize about my behavior."  
  
"But you don't, do you?"  
  
"I don't," said Conor. "I don't apologize to my bully."  
  
Harry smirked his usual detached smirk. "That's quite intense, O'Malley. I don't know that you're that attached to me to the point you would consider me as exclusively yours."  
  
"You only publicly took me, though."  
  
The smirk fell, and a pair of blond eyebrows frowned, sharpening the glare of the equally light eyes beneath it. "What do you want in here, then? Still not satisfied in getting your visibility parade?"  
  
"Why me?" Conor asked, staring back into the pair of blue eyes beneath the black swollen cheeks where he punched him relentlessly a week ago. He remembered he used to think that there's something about him that caught Harry's eyes. Harry never saw him before, they were just classmates and they barely talked. But ever since he got the nightmare after his mum's cancer diagnosis, Harry suddenly decide that Conor O'Malley is a worthy plaything.  
  
But when Conor thought about it again, Harry never actually beat him. He just punched his stomach once, but just that. His method of bullying just kept around tripping Conor down or flip his lunch trays, and when her mother getting sicker and sicker, when Conor just getting used to the pain, using that to distract his mind from his invisibility at school, and getting used to masochistically clung to Harry's constant eyes on him, he stopped touching him altogether. Conor remembered Harry was just standing at arm-reach in front of him with eyes calmly studied Conor, deciding what to do to him like a professor trying to dissects his lab frog as clean as possible.  
  
 _"I guess we'll never find out what it is O'Malley wants."_  
  
He remembered Harry said that to him. It was as if  _he knew_.  
  
"Why me?" asked Conor again when Harry didn't answer. But Harry just stared at him like the answer was in his silence.  
  
"Do I need a reason?" answered Harry after awhile. "I just did it for fun. Because you're so out there."  
  
"You never see me before--" and then it hit him. "You see me..."  
  
Harry snorted, "Of course I see you, O'Malley. I think everybody could see you just fine, plain as a day."  
  
Conor pressed his lips. Plain as a day... was it mean everybody in school understand his suffering, but he just too blind to accept it? Did Harry  _do_ him a charity case by stepping up to him and showed him that?  
  
The Monster's voice was ringing in his head,  _"No one is actually pure bad or good. Human is always something in between."_ But the fact that his bully actually did something to help him was quite an absurd idea to believe.  
  
 _"Conor O'Malley who swans around school acting like nobody understand his_ suffering _. Conor O'Malley who wants to be punished, who needs to be punished."_  Harry said that, too, before Conor beat him black and blue and landed him in this hospital with bruised face and broken everything. But that bully now seemed... contented, almost...  
  
It was as if he knew. As if he felt it himself.  
  
"I see it, too," Conor said. "I see you."  
  
A frown struggled to formed in Harry's brows. "What do you see?"  
  
Conor smirked. "A broken bully."  
  
Harry let out a wheezing laugh, as if his lungs was also broken, which worried Conor. He didn't beat him that much now, did he? Would he get into trouble if there's problem with Harry's lungs?  
  
"You got your punishment now," Conor said.  
  
Harry stared at him with his penetrating blue eyes, measuring him up. "As you are, I see."  
  
"You really are too smart to be a bully, you know. You ruined your excellent university scholarship offers simply by bothering me."  
  
"You are too dumb to be my victim, too." An amused glint was there in Harry's eyes. "I only bother those that I like, O'Malley."  
  
Conor thought he would never want to answer that.  
  
  


 

**End**


End file.
